Case Number 14918: Small Claims Court

THE SPEECHES COLLECTION, VOLUME TWO: REPUBLICANS VS. DEMOCRATS

The Charge

American political oration at its finest.

The Case How to ensure that your DVD compilation of famous speeches
sells rather poorly (or "Judge Clark Douglas reviews The Speeches
Collection: Volume Two").

First, look at the previous DVD set you have released. For instance, you
might be the group of people that released The Speeches Collection: Volume
One, a compilation featuring notable speeches by a wide variety of
individuals, ranging from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Ronald Reagan. Look back at
what you did previously, and completely ignore that when creating the next
installment. Rather than providing a lot of speeches from a lot of people, limit
this next collection to a small handful of people.

Okay, let's move on to the next step. Now it's time to pick a theme, because
"Great Speeches" simply won't cut it this time. Let's say you want to
go with "Republicans vs. Democrats." We'll assume that you want to
limit this category to former Presidents. Your packaging should offer the
promise of speeches from "Four Great Presidents," so you should
probably include Roosevelt and Eisenhower. However, like any good politician,
you shouldn't feel a need to keep your promise. Pick two Presidents that aren't
looked upon kindly by history. How about Truman and Nixon? Good choices. Also,
you should be sure to give the most time to the worst president. Nixon needs
about, oh, 73 minutes. You had better not give more than 50 minutes each to
Eisenhower and Roosevelt.

Now, obviously this set needs to appeal to history buffs, and absolutely no
one else! Make sure that most viewers are unfamiliar with the context of any of
the speeches you present. I suggest not including any narration or title cards
to help give viewers a sense of what is going on. If those who purchase your DVD
aren't willing to invest hours of their time trying to understand everything,
they don't deserve to hear these fine speeches that you're offering. Be sure to
avoid presenting everything in chronological order, too. Just jump back and
forth as you please.

You're doing a nice job, and you're well on your way to creating a DVD
collection that won't be of much use to anyone. Now that we've eliminated much
of the mainstream, it's time to start irritating your target audience. We need
to be sure to ruin the usefulness of this release as an archival teaching tool.
The best way to do this would be to only offer little snippets of speeches. Cut
out some of the interesting parts, leaving only sound bites and tasty tidbits.
Never, under any circumstances, include an entire speech from start to finish.
What you're going after is a context-free, poorly-organized montage of video
clips of these four different people.

Let's move along to the technical portion of things. First, put up a notice
at the beginning of the DVD informing everyone that you've done everything you
can with this archival footage. Then, let the footage itself indicate that
you've put little to no effort into cleaning up the material. Make sure that as
much of this footage as possible sounds weak and looks worse. Pick a lot of
segments featuring severe audio distortion. You can get away with it, because
obviously all historical footage is supposed to look that way. Do not include
any subtitles on the DVD. The hearing-impaired can find transcripts on the
Internet. If you're lucky, those whose hearing is just fine will do the same
thing.

At this point, you'll have done just about everything you can. However, be
warned that some unsuspecting people may still buy your DVD. The promise of
watching Presidents talk will always have some small level of appeal, no matter
how poorly those speeches are presented. Hopefully, most viewers will realize
that buying something like The Presidents Collection (a fantastic box set
of documentaries this presents this material and much more in a very compelling
way) is a much smarter investment, and that your release has nothing unique to
offer. Best of luck. Oh, and if it will help, I'll be glad to do my part to
drive DVD Verdict readers away. The Speeches Collection: Volume Two is
guilty.